On October 7, Hamas shocked Israel and the world by penetrating a multi-billion-dollar defensive shield, which included electronic surveillance, automated gun towers, a sea blockade and underground barrier, erected over years. It attacked and occupied Israeli military bases, towns, and a kibbutz for days. Analysts say it was the worst military and intelligence failure since the 1973 October War. Four-hundred-and-fifty Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers, police, and Shin Bet agents were killed. A total of 1,200 Israelis died, and 240 hostages were spirited back to Gaza and hidden within its miles of tunnels.

Initially, the IDF refused to release casualty figures. Only after Haaretz made the refusal public in early December did it relent. The numbers the army did release then—1,600 wounded since the ground invasion began on October 23—were vastly undercounted. The health ministry, using actual hospital records, said that over 10,000 soldiers and civilians were wounded between October 7 and today.  Even excluding civilian casualties, there is a wide discrepancy between the two casualty counts.

The chair of an Israeli support group for wounded soldiers said that between 10,000 and 15,000 had been wounded since October 7, many of these suffered permanent disabilities: PTSD, amputees, paraplegics, blinded, and so on. The article includes interviews with Israeli mental health advocates who warn the level of trauma they have seen and expect to see in the coming year dwarfs anything they had ever experienced before.

In recent weeks, Israeli soldiers have spoken up about the lost opportunities to detect and prevent the attack. An officer with t Unit 8200, Israel’s signal intelligence unit (SIGINT), obtained a copy of the Hamas training document it called “Jericho Wall” (as in the Biblical story of the toppling of the city’s walls). It outlined precisely the attack that Hamas did indeed mount a year later. Upon obtaining the document, an Israeli officer warned her commanders in the field that Jericho Wall was not just a theoretical plan, but one that Hamas intended to implement as it had conducted a training exercise that seemed to mimic the one outlined in the document.

Separately, another IDF surveillance scout detected the Hamas exercises being played out in front of her eyes. She too alerted her commanders, six months before October 7, that these were not typical military training exercises, but rather intended for a real and impending attack on Israel.

Both their warnings were dismissed and the result was the tragedy that ensued.

After the October 7 attack, the entire country reeled from the disaster. Interviews with survivors and loved ones of the hostages flooded the airwaves. It shook the nation to the core. It took more than a week for the military to draw up its plans and prepare for war. The entire active-duty military and reservist force of 360,000 troops were mobilized for the counteroffensive.

Wars Based on Rage and Vengeance Fail
The goals and spirit of the counterattack on Gaza were clear: vengeance. The Israeli defense minister infamously said: “we are fighting human animals”. The president of Tel Aviv University called for the extermination of Gazans, invoking the Biblical command to eradicate the entire tribe of Amalek: men, women, children, and livestock. Members of the Knesset called for dropping nuclear weapons on Gaza and the intelligence ministry offered a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel its residents to tent cities in the Sinai.

While all wars are motivated by emotions like pride, anger, and nationalist fervor, most have political objectives as well—they are primarily intended to secure national interests. Israel’s war on Gaza had no such political component. It was fueled almost entirely by revenge. A war based purely on emotion, retaliation and fury is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Because Israel’s objectives are based on such irrational impulses, its objectives are divorced from reality and virtually unobtainable. Though Israel may want to exterminate Gaza or rid itself of all its residents, its Arab neighbors have rejected the latter plan. And the rest of the world will not permit the former to happen.

One of the IDF’s repeatedly stated objectives is to destroy Hamas. Yet after four months of combat, U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal at the end of January, that it has eliminated only 20-30 percent of its fighters. Sources estimate it has between 30-40,000 overall.

Israeli officials have floated proposals for an indefinite military occupation after hostilities end. But they have been rejected by Hamas and the Biden administration.

However, wars are only winnable when their objectives are rational and realizable.  This conflict is neither, which is why Israel is losing this war. In fact, it will lose this war regardless of what military objective or ultimate outcome is achieved. It will not realize its declared objective: to obliterate Hamas and expel all Gaza’s residents. Even if, for argument’s sake, it achieved these goals, Palestinian resistance will exist wherever there are Palestinians—whether in Sinai, Beirut, Ankara, Tehran or Amman. Hamas is not just an armed militia; it is an idea. It represents Palestinian nationalism and is a powerful force of resistance to Israeli occupation, dispossession, and genocide. If there was no Hamas, the Palestinian people would create one.

Therefore, the idea that Israel will solve all its problems by eliminating Palestinian resistance is a chimera. It also poisons Israeli discourse.  There is no longer any constituency for peaceful compromise or a two-state solution. Israelis have eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree of security, and in refusing to believe in a political solution, they have embraced a garrison state model—at perpetual war with its neighbors near and far including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis, as a few examples.

Israel’s Military Directives
As it wages an unwinnable war, Israel has resorted to military policies which have caused collateral damage on both sides.

The Hannibal Directive

When the IDF began mounting a counterattack on October 7, among the first to join the fight were helicopter pilots. As they went into the air, they found it difficult—if not impossible—to identify clear enemy targets. They became aware that Hamas fighters had taken Israeli hostages as they fled in vehicles back toward Gaza.

They either made individual decisions, or in some cases asked permission from superior officers to follow the Hannibal Directive, an order to kill IDF soldiers if they are captured in combat. The goal is to eliminate hostages and the need to negotiate with Hamas for the exchange of Palestinian prisoners.

Until now, the Directive has only applied to soldiers. There are credible claims, for example, that two soldiers killed during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge were killed by IDF fire, after they were captured by Hamas fighters and as they were dragged into a tunnel.

Until now, Hannibal has never applied to civilians.  But a number of Israeli civilians were killed by the helicopter pilots. An IDF officer interviewed by Israeli TV said that he’d viewed the carnage near the border fence after the battle was over, and there were clearly Israeli civilians who died from Israeli fire along with their Hamas captors.

There is also eyewitness testimony from Israelis who survived the Palestinian assault in a Kibbutz Be’eri. The fighters broke into their home and held them hostage.  An Israeli tank fired into the home, knowing there were civilians inside and a child was killed in this attack.

The Amalek Directive

An Israeli security source told the Cairo Review that the security cabinet issued a directive to the Shin Bet and IDF to assassinate the top six leaders of Hamas and their families, the Hamas fighters who participated in the October 7 attack and their families, journalists and their families. The order’s name refers to the Biblical Amalekites—sworn enemies of the Israelites—all of whom were murdered by King Saul upon divine command. I’ve named the cabinet document the Amalek Directive.

Both a grandson and grand-daughter of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau, died during separate IDF attacks.  Fourteen other members of his family were killed in a separate attack. The entire family of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, died in a similar attack. Not only is the killing of journalists a war crime, the murder of their entire families, simply due to a relationship to him, is as well.

In other words, Israel no longer makes distinctions between Hamas and civilians. It considers all Gazans Hamas. Every resident has become a legitimate target. This explains why the vast majority of the Palestinians killed are civilians. Contrary to what Israel and the Biden administration are claiming about minimizing civilian casualties, the reality is that every living thing is a target.

Those who are not killed but instead captured by Israel undergo dehumanizing treatment. For example, we can see their treatment in videos and images aired on Israeli TV of scores of handcuffed, blindfolded, half-naked men kneeling on the ground. Though the IDF claims they are Hamas fighters, Haaretz reports that only 10 percent are. The only reasons to engage in such a sadistic exhibition is to satisfy the rage of the Israeli public, degrade the dignity of these men, and pour salt on the wounds of Gazans.

Genocide
Another critical element of Israeli war strategy is the destruction of virtually all of Gaza from people to infrastructure, to homes, to businesses, to schools. Many scholarly experts have agreed that this is genocide.

South African filed a complaint charging Israel with crimes of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Last month, it ruled that there was sufficient evidence to support the charges. It ordered Israel to cease such military operations. Instead, it has escalated them.

During a visit by Blinken, Netanyahu announced that that he ordered the IDF to invade Rafah, where 1.5-million refugees have taken shelter.  He said they would be “evacuated.” But the army did not evacuate northern Gaza during its first military operation. An Israeli security source told the Cairo Review it will follow the same procedures in Rafah.  he IDF will make no effort to evacuate—unless it considers civilians fleeing for their lives an “evacuation.” Following warnings from the Biden administration, the prime minister has promised “safe passage” to civilians. But they despite promises and devising “safe zones” free from attack, thousands of Gazans were killed as they fled the north.

The International Criminal Court has not taken any action regarding an investigation of Israeli crimes begun after the 2014 Operation Protective Edge invasion of Gaza. Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, visited the Egyptian Rafah border crossing, but was barred entry by the Israeli military. He did meet with Israeli October 7 survivors.

Though he said the investigation was “a priority”, he offered no explicit commitment or date when it would offer findings. His visit and statement were political, but not substantive.

The United National Security Council is stymied by a U.S. veto. A recent attempt to pass a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire was rejected. Thirteen states voted in favor while the United States cast the only NO vote, and it was defeated.

Despite the ICJ’s ruling preventing Israel from proceeding with acts of genocide, the genocide continues unabated. Nearly 27,000 Gazans have been killed, 75 percent of whom are civilians. Of the overall total, 70 percent are women and children. Nearly ninety journalists have been killed, many of them specifically targeted in a IDF war on the media. For context, only sixty journalists were killed globally in all of 2022. The IDF wants no live coverage of its war, so it kills the messenger.

As has become typical with media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the media has consistently reflected the Israeli narrative. Lurid video accounts of the rape of Israeli women by Palestinians during the October 7 attack circulated by Israel were amplified by the global media. Israel also offered screenings to members of Congress, world leaders, and even celebrities seeking to score points in the propaganda war.

Meanwhile, there has been substantially less coverage of the deaths of Palestinian women and children. The reason for the paucity of media reporting is that Israel has prohibited foreign journalists access to Gaza unless they are embedded with IDF units. Outlets like the BBC and NBC have availed themselves of this access, and this has ensured favorable coverage for Israel. On the other hand, the Gazans providing reports are mainly stringers and freelancers whose reporting receives less prominence than the regular bylined reporters.

A CNN reporter defied the media ban and was the first such foreigner to enter Gaza. She was able to do so because she entered with a Qatari relief convoy. Her first report was a harrowing account offered by the aunt of an 18-month-old orphan who will eventually learn that both his parents and all his siblings died in an Israeli strike. This is precisely the reason Israel banned such coverage. If the media documented the slaughter for an international audience, the outrage would be magnified a hundred-fold.

And while these atrocities take place, Gazans are being displaced on a daily basis. Eighty percent of Gazans have already become refugees, their homes destroyed or they have been expelled from them by IDF orders. Though Israel claims it has identified “safe areas,” they constitute a checkerboard of 600 micro-zones which few residents can identify, even if they could physically reach them.

Furthermore, Israel has laid siege to Gaza, refusing to permit any humanitarian aid to enter the enclave (aside from a weeklong ceasefire, when it permitted half the normal aid to bring in food and fuel). Meanwhile, residents seek shelter in the rubble or in homes which could be destroyed by IAF missiles at any time. The mental impact of stress, anxiety, and sheer terror Palestinian victims in Gaza are enduring is enormous, and will accompany everyone for the rest of their lives and for generations to come.

The Backlash in America
Powerful images from Gaza of a moonscape of demolished buildings, refugees carrying the elderly on carts, children clamoring for UN handouts with empty pots, the mass graves for those killed, and babies dying in incubators have motivated a powerful media counterattack by Israel and its defenders.

One strategy has been to appropriate pro-Palestinian slogans. Congressional Representative Elise Stefanik, in a House hearing excoriating U.S. university presidents for their laxness in punishing pro-Palestine students, declared that the word “intifada” meant calling for a “Jewish genocide”.  The former means “shaking off”—as in shaking off Israeli occupation in this context—and has a spiritual, and sometimes physical meaning. But it has absolutely nothing to do with Jews.

It is useful propaganda tool to appropriate “genocide” against Palestinians and turn it into a genocide against Jews, thus making it a taboo for pro-Palestine activists. Those who use it are labeled as anti-Semites and their views are discredited.

Another means of smearing the Palestinian cause has been to transform “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” from an aspiration for Palestinian national rights into an allegedly anti-Semitic slogan.

The accusation that “from the river” slogan is anti-Semitic is steeped in hypocrisy. In fact, the father of Zionist Revisionism (the precursor to the Likud Party and other right-wing movements), Zeev Jabotinsky, declared in a poem he wrote: “there are two banks of the Jordan, both are ours.” In his maximalist vision, Israeli territory stretches from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. This is no more than a Zionist claim of territorial sovereignty over the Greater Land of Israel. Unlike the Palestinians, who haven’t yet achieved any of their political or national aspirations, Israel now exerts actual sovereignty over territory to its north, east, and south in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.

The misuse of the slogan has played out horribly on college campuses: any student or group on any campus which features it at a rally, is being accused of engaging in hate speech. Three universities, Columbia, Brandeis, Rutgers, and Georgetown, have banned Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), for engaging in protests. Their “offense”? They endangered Jewish students and public safety. The truth is quite different. The only violence at these rallies across the United States has been from pro-Israel forces seeking to disrupt or assault anti-war activists.

Student leaders of Palestine solidarity groups have been harassed and doxed by pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission and Israel on Campus Coalition. These groups allegedly pay students to spy on pro-Palestinian individuals and groups. The information is passed along to the main offices in Washington D.C. and from there relayed to Israeli intelligence. The pro-Israel groups managed to impact the careers of three such pro-Palestinian students who had been accepted as associates at major law firms only to have their offers rescinded. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman threatened to stop making millions of dollars in gifts to Harvard University and demanded to be brought the names of the students who circulated and signed an anti-war statement in the Harvard Crimson. He declared he would never hire anyone who supported an anti-war letter signed by thirty-five student groups. He also led a successful campaign to fire University President Claudine Gay, whom he disparaged as a “diversity hire” (she is African-American);  and for her refusal to stop pro-Palestine voices on campus. Ackman and his fellow billionaires are playing the role of Joe McCarthy in this morality play and are restoring a dreaded weapon of his era: the blacklist . In the 1950s, teachers, actors, directors, government officials were accused of Communist links. Congressional hearings hounded them and even forced them to expose colleagues as “Reds.”  Victims lost jobs and careers were ruined; some like Paul Robeson, Berthold Brecht, and Charlie Chaplain went into European exile.

Muslim-Americans have also become victims of anti-Palestinian terror attacks. A six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was stabbed to death by his landlord.  In Vermont, three Palestinian students wearing keffiyehs were shot by a white supremacist. One of them is permanently paralyzed.

While Ackman tends to support Democrats, GOP billionaires have joined the movement in defense of Israel. Almost a score of them have withheld or threatened to withhold hundreds of millions in donations to their alma maters until they punish pro-Palestine students. They have in turn enlisted Republicans and Democrats allied with AIPAC to hold a House of Representatives hearing in which the female presidents of three Ivy League schools were dressed down. Those who attempted to uphold their campuses as places in which a diversity of thought was permitted on these issues were denounced.

Afterward, wealthy donors and members of the Boards of Trustees, and even one governor, pressured the three women to resign. The University of Pennsylvania president, Liz Magill, did so under fierce pressure. Initially Harvard’s Board of Overseers support President Gay in the face of a fierce effort to unseat her. But pressure gradually mounted and she resigned. She issued a statement which pointed to the misogyny and racism of her opponents and deplored their tactics.

It is no accident that pro-Israel forces chose universities with female and/or Black leaders to target. Israel’s supporters not only have the pro-Palestine movement in their sights but are also going after the programs of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). These are programs designed to enhance ethnic diversity on campus, and to ensure all ethnicities, and all those with disabilities, are included in all facets of university life. Ackman and his fellow privileged white billionaires detest this concept, which embraces values of social justice and equity. They also detest campus activism (unless it is conservative). In fact, his tweet demanding Gay’s resignation included an attack on DEI. It claimed that Gay was a “diversity hire”. He made the even more ludicrous statement that promoting such “unqualified” candidates does them a disservice.

There is a mass hysteria in America as politicians, human rights, and Palestine solidarity activists, faculty, presidents, students, and professionals are made to fear for their careers if they post social media content supporting Palestine. Students have lost jobs at law firms; professors have been disciplined or fired; and university presidents were forced to resign, and more.

The most apt historical parallel is the Red Scare, in which the progressive targets in government, academia, and Hollywood were forced to testify, and implicate themselves or others as traitors to America and as supporters of Communism. This led to loyalty oaths and the Hollywood Blacklist. Some victims, Charlie Chaplain among them, were forced to emigrate to more friendly countries to escape victimization, social ostracism and lost careers. The doxing and sabotage of the careers of pro-Palestine individuals today is a throwback to that infamous era.

Failure of U.S. Policy
The Biden administration’s policy during the war has proven disastrous. The president, who has been an ardent Zionist for decades, has endorsed Israel’s attacks and sent billions in weapons to replenish the Israeli weapons arsenal; U.S. munitions are killing thousands of Gazans. Meanwhile, the U.S. Iron Dome is protecting Israelis from Palestinian rockets, thus allowing Israel to pursue the war with virtually no civilian casualties or popular dissent.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken even approached Jordan and Egypt with an Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza and dump the refugees in the Sinai. It called for both countries to accept the majority of Gaza’s 2.5-million inhabitants, and to sweeten the pot, Netanyahu suggested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forgive a “large part” of Egypt’s $22-billion debt to the IMF.  Yet, the Israeli prime minister never offered a penny from his own country.

U.S. support for ethnic cleansing is evident in the 106-billion-dollar supplemental aid package intended to replenish Ukrainian and Israeli war stocks. Tucked into the bill is a 17-billion-dollar request for weapons and humanitarian aid to Israel. After considerable wrangling, the House of Representatives failed to pass the bill.

The funding proposal also includes 1 billion dollars in aid to Gazans who may “voluntarily” leave the enclave (a portion will offer aid to Ukraine as well). The idea that any Gazan would leave Gaza independent of forced expulsion is absurd.

After the Arab countries rejected the proposal out of hand, the administration changed course and declared it opposed an Israeli attempt to expand its buffer zone by appropriating territory of northern Gaza; opposed any “forced relocation” of Gazans; and requested that Israel permit humanitarian aid to Gaza. Netanyahu has rejected each of these requests and pursued policies that directly contradicted them.

Blinken argued that Israel is taking every precaution to protect civilians in its attacks;  that the United States emphasized this consideration in discussion with Israel; and that any loss of Palestinian life is “regrettable”.

Israel also promised it would not harm civilians during its latest invasion of Rafah.  These, of course, are hollow statements designed to insulate the Biden administration from criticism. They fail to do so. Much of the world understands that these are lies.

Until recently, leaders in Europe and the U.S. Congress have been snowed by Israeli hasbara, not to mention cowed by fears of being labeled as anti-Semitic. The winds of change have now shifted, however; prime ministers of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, who are among the United States’s closest allies, issued a joint statement calling for a Gaza ceasefire. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted 153-9 in favor of a similar resolution. Egypt and Mauritania also invoked UNGA Resolution 377, which allows the General Assembly to circumvent the Security Council when a veto has impeded its ability to address issues that threaten peace and security. If the UNGA does act, then the Council (and the United States) will face enormous pressure to pass a ceasefire resolution.

U.S. Elections in the Balance
Biden has the lowest approval rating at this point in his presidency of any modern president running for a second term. In part, due to opposition to his stance on Gaza. In the battleground state of Michigan, critical for any Democrat presidential candidate, an October poll showed support among Arab–Americans plummeted from 49 to 17 percent.  His opponents in this community have organized to deny him their votes.

Polls show that a majority of Americans not only do not support Biden’s approach, they disagree with Israel’s attacks against Gaza. In Congress, those calling for an immediate ceasefire rose from an initial thirteen House members to forty. Now, three senators have joined them. White House and State Department staffers have filed similar statements.

Biden is running behind Trump in most national polls. Any major factor that decreases the motivation of traditional Democratic voters could torpedo his election prospects. He is banking on the American public forgetting this debacle by November. But the longer the war lasts, the closer the election becomes and the more likely the average voter will remember.

AIPAC and the poisoning of U.S. electoral process

AIPAC, whose campaign donations amply fund the war chests of scores of senators and House members, demands fealty to Israeli legislative interests in return. It has now expanded its sights. Not satisfied with maintaining the loyalty of elected members of Congress, it seeks to control which candidates win primaries. This excludes undesirable ones from reaching a general election, and guarantees its chosen candidates will be elected.

Billionaire GOP donors have contributed tens of millions to AIPAC-related PACs (political action committees that use donations to fund election campaigns), which are spent attacking Democratic primary candidates. Those without millions at their disposal cannot withstand the incessant attack ads run on TV, radio, and social media. Any candidate willing to criticize Israel is a target. They include Muslim–Americans, women of color, LGBTQ individuals, and even Jews. Anyone who, if elected, would join or be sympathetic to such progressive Democratic politicians, known collectively as the Squad, became vulnerable.

AIPAC has its own PAC plus two others loosely affiliated with it. In 2022, they spent a combined 60-million dollars in primaries. They didn’t even have to participate in the general election, since a primary victory guaranteed their pro-Israel Democrat a House seat. The pro-Israel PACs will likely spend 100-million dollars in the 2024 primary cycle.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among the most well-known members of the Squad, denounced AIPAC as “racist and bigoted.” She said the Lobby’s intervention degrades and subverts the electoral system and American democracy.

Against Israeli lobbying and electoral activism, there are few progressive PACs which push back. J Street, a liberal Zionist DC lobbying group raised nearly 6-million-dollars in 2022, 12 percent of what the pro-Israel PACs raised. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Zionist movement, has a PAC with an even smaller campaign war chest.

The Israeli lobby, meanwhile, continues to aim to police Israel-related discourse in government, the media, arts, culture, entertainment, and universities. Social media has also become a critical space in which this battle is waged. Israel monitors and arrests Palestinians for “anti-Israel” posts. It has threatened to monitor and punish platforms which incite anti-Israel sentiment. It monitors social media intensively and responds to what it perceives as hostile content. Sometimes it does so by directly lobbying corporate CEOs. It also files complaints with platforms which lead to suspensions or deletions of pro-Palestine accounts. It boasts publicly that up to 80 percent of its complaints are successful.

The Need, and Danger, of Speaking Up
In December, Israel assassinated Palestinian poet Refaat Al-Areer, along with many members of his family. Al-Areer was renowned not only in Gaza, but throughout the world. The New York Times published a 2021 profile that focused on his college classroom discussions of Hebrew and Palestinian literature. He also published an op-ed in the Times, about his daughter’s fears of an Israeli attack on their home.

An Israeli security source told Cairo Review that the Israeli security cabinet approved Al-Areer’s murder, designating him as “Amalek,” an eternal enemy of the Jewish people. According to Euro Med Monitor, he received repeated death threats, likely from Israeli intelligence. They told him that IDF troops were coming to get him. Because of this, he moved from an UNWRA school where he was sheltering, to his sister’s home. That is where a precisely targeted Israeli missile smashed into their apartment, without damaging the rest of the building.

The source told the Cairo Review that one of the major reasons he was on the Amalek hit list was a tweet he published last October, in which he responded to an Israeli hoax claiming that babies had been discovered baked in an oven. Al-Areer tweeted, mockingly: “with baking powder or without?” This may be one of the few instances during the entire Israeli–Palestinian conflict when someone was murdered for mockery.

A notorious right-wing journalist, Bari Weiss, highlighted the tweet, bringing it to the attention of her one million followers.  The same day, the Daily Mail published an article about the tweet, calling it a “sick joke.”

While NGOs like Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights defend the victims of the Israeli Lobby’s ire in the legal arena, there are few groups who do so in the political arena.  There are Muslim and Arab–American groups, like the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Council for Islamic Relations, which protect the interests of these communities. But there is no group defending solidarity activists or launching counterattacks when AIPAC or the Anti-Defamation League declare JVP or SJP, “hate groups.” There is, essentially, no counter-hasbara initiative—nothing like the alphabet soup of pro-Israel groups (AIPAC, ADL, AJC, CAMERA, etc.). The Palestinian solidarity movement needs to respond robustly to the threats, doxing, smears, and attack ads. When university presidents are attacked or when House committees launch inquisitions, such an organization needs to push back, and present a counter-narrative that affirms the dignity and humanity of Palestine and the Palestinian people.